Cons
Nonstandard power supply and cord. No reset switch or hard power switch. Heavy. Pricey.

Bottom Line

The XPS 720 H2C (Blu-ray) is now updated with nVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI graphics, an overclocked quad-core processor, and physics card. It's still a bit of overkill and hard on the back, but it's a killer gaming system from the second-largest PC maker on the planet.

Priced at $7,756 direct, $8,955 with 27-inch widescreen LCD monitor, the Dell XPS 720 H2C (Blu-ray) is an updated version of the XPS 700, the XPS 710 H2C and the XPS 720 H2Cunits that we saw earlier this year and late last year. The internals are now as modern as Dell can make them: The XPS 720 H2C retains the quiet (and expensive) thermoelectric cooler and adds some new technologies, such as a quad-core overclocked processor, a GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card (replacing the older 8800 GTX), and a Blu-ray burner that lets you watch high-def movies or burn 50GB data disks. It represents a very good choice for the gamer.

The XPS 720 H2C's styling is a love-it-or-hate-it affair for most. Personally, I'm torn. On the one hand, I enjoy the black trim on the outer case and the fact that there's a lot more metal than plastic on this system. But I don't particularly like the way it "leans" forward, taking up a lot of cubic feet. The overhang could also get in the way if you place it on the floor next to you. The new windows in the case door show off the internal thermoelectric cooler, but the use of the "X" logo in the design comes off as a little ostentatious in my eyes. I think the same idea could have been carried out using simpler geometric shapes. At least the doors covering the multimedia card reader and optical drives, which are shaped like horizontal louvers, make a unified design statement that works for this monolith. All in all, this was an innovative shape last year on the XPS 700, and it certainly has another year or two in store, but designs like that of the HP Blackbird 002 outshine the XPS 700-series case in both beauty and styling.

A couple of nits to pick: The cables inside could have been routed a little better. Boutique shops such as Falcon Northwest and Overdrive PC show that with careful routing on a system costing $7,000 or more they can make the inside of the case as pretty as the outside. More to the point, optimally routed cables can make a difference in terms of cooling efficiency. Another small problem: The high-capacity (1-kW) power supply uses a different three-prong power cord from the one you're probably used to (the end you plug into the wall is the same, but the part you plug into the computer is different), and it has no hard on/off switch. The system also lacks a reset switch, so if it ever crashes, you have to pull the cord if the main power switch is not responding.

Inside the case, some of the same things I like are still there. These include the tool-less carriers for the hard drives, the pre-wired chassis, and, most of all, a beefy card retention mechanism for the graphics cards. These days, when graphics cards constitute up to a fifth of the cost of a system and weigh a couple of pounds each, you really need card retention to save the internals of your system from shipping mishaps. Among the high-end gaming systems I see each year, at least several come with a shipping problem, usually involving the graphics cards. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, particularly when the cost of these cards can approach $900 each.

The high-end GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards and the quad-core 3-GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 processor (overclocked to 3.67 GHz) helped the system gain one solid win in the benchmark drag races. At 2,560-by-1,600 resolution, the XPS 720 H2C achieved 14,979 points on 3DMark06a phenomenal score (high scores being best). Similar units with dual graphics cards posted scores as low as 13,000 (those with the GeForce 8800 GTX) and just under 11,000 (those with the Radeon 2900 XT). Others, the Falcon Northwest Mach V (GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI) and the Overdrive PC Core2.SLI among them, placed above the XPS 720 H2C on the other 3D tests, though our test unit remained competitive.

The XPS 720 H2C is one of the few systems I've seen to have the newish Ageia PhysX physics processor card, which helps improve performance and realism on games programmed with it in mind. However, aside from a few tech demos and a specially commissioned level on the game Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, there aren't too many chances to use this card (yet). It's a case of new technology waiting for a use at this point.

On the multimedia tests, the Dell performed admirably: 40 seconds on the Windows Media Encoder test and 25 seconds on the Photoshop test. These scores were only a few seconds off of the top marks set by the ABS Ultimate X Magnum. Since both units have RAID 0 10,000-rpm drives and overclocked QX6850 processors, I surmise that the ABS's 1,600-MHz DDR3 memory was able to push the visual data in and out of the processor just that much faster than the still blazingly fast 1,066-MHz DDR2 memory in the XPS 720 H2C. Right now, 1,066 MHz is the fastest DDR2 memory available, and DDR3 requires a different motherboard setup (the DIMM slots are different). It's not a huge differencewhat's 2 to 3 seconds anyway?but the Dell does lose bragging rights to the ABS. The XPS 720 H2C is still plenty fast, and you won't know the difference unless you're timing all your tasks with a stopwatch.

It's hard to talk "value" when you're talking about a system that costs as much as a good used car. However, as configured here, the XPS 720 H2C hits all the latest available technologies: a speedy, overclocked QX6850 processor (you can have it shipped overclocked, as I did for our review unit, or at the stock speed of 3.0 GHz); dual GeForce 8800 Ultra cards; a Blu-ray burner for those 50GB BD-Rs you need to burn and HD movies to watch; and new 1,066-MHz DDR2 memory.

All these technologies are wrapped up in a package that's appealing to the target market: well-off geeks with a penchant for conspicuous consumption. (It's the Cadillac to the HP Blackbird's Jaguar to the Falcon NW Mach V's Ferrari.) The customer who procures the latest exotic cars from the friendly, expensive-suit-clad salesperson is the same sort who will go out and buy the XPS 720 H2C. Like other non-owners of exotic cars, the rest of us can just sit by and yearn when we see it at the LAN party.

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